Please stop blaming teachers. Here is a graphic example of how administrators get away with screw ups while teachers get fired. A principal's JOB is to ensure the safety of ALL the kids while they are at school or school events. This one really screwed up and a little girl DIED.
Under the proper conditions, with the appropriate degree of preparation and caution, I would probably agree that a school principal should not be dismissed when a tragic accident occurs out of his/her control. In this instance, however, there appears to have been something of a pattern of laxness, at least with regard to these class trips, as witnessed by the lack of parent-signed permission slips documented now on at least two occasions.
Likely those slips would not have made a difference in the final tragedy, but there IS something else Mr. Maldonado-Rivera should have done that WOULD perhaps have made a difference: intervene in the trip plan. Sending 25 or so students out to an ocean beach, accompanied by a first-year teacher, a 19-year-old intern, and the teacher's boyfriend(!!!) does not in my mind constitute anything remotely close to due care and precaution. If parents had known that this trio constituted their children's entire cohort of chaperones, some might have voiced concern to the school. Regardless, Mr. Maldonado-Rivera's job is to ensure that the chaperoning is adequate to the event, and in this case, it was patently not. The potential for trouble could easily have been foreseen and should have been, due to the small number of chaperones, their inexperience, and the fact that one of them did not even know how to swim. Mr. Maldonado-Rivera's failure to insist on more, or at least more experienced and mature chaperones (and ones who could swim) appears at minimum to have been a direct contributor to the tragedy. He may well be a wonderful school principal, but he also seems to have fostered a dangerously casual attitude toward procedures and safety, one that seems to have at least contributed to a young girl's needless, accidental death.
The DOE response, that "In the heartbreaking days following Nicole's death our primary focus was not on the tenure status of Columbia Secondary School officials" is ridiculous and belied by their own actions, since it certainly didn't take them long to focus on the employment status of the teacher (now fired) and the AP (now demoted from administration back to being "just" a teacher).
In Joel Klein's DOE, there's only accountability when it serves their interests or promotes their agenda. Nice work if you can get it.
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2010/07/harlem-principal-got-tenure-after.html